by Greg Sisk
• • •
On Wednesday morning, two days after the bombing, Alex Kramer called to arrange a meeting at the St. Paul office of the ATF. Ed Burton quickly arrived, and they sat down together in Kramer’s office.
Burton summarized the work he and other officers from the Eden Prairie police department had been doing—the search for Pirkle and his questioning of Klein, Peterson, and various neighbors and Insignia Construction employees.
Burton also shared again what the Eden Prairie police had found at the crime scene before the ATF forensics team had arrived. “The responding officers were careful to steer clear of the front drive and yard where the car had exploded. They did only a quick check of the house and surrounding areas for anything obvious. They found no one other than the Kleins present and no evidence of forced entry anywhere on the premises.
“Of course, any night-time intruder wouldn’t have needed to actually break in. Our officers found the side door to the garage had been left unlocked.” Burton sighed. “Too many people in Eden Prairie forget to close and lock their garage doors, which accounts for the high rate of bicycle thefts we have. You’d be surprised how often our patrol officers have to knock on some homeowner’s door in the middle of the night because they can see the main garage door left up. Of course, when it comes to a small side door to a garage, patrol officers wouldn’t be able to tell it had been left unlocked.
“So, that’s all we’ve got. I know it isn’t much. But we’re still working on it. What do you have?” Burton looked expectantly at Kramer.
“Well, we have preliminary results from the lab. It’s not conclusive, but more ‘coincidences’ are racking up,” said Kramer, in that same sarcastic tone he had used at the crime scene a few days before.
“It was definitely TNT used in the car bomb,” Kramer revealed, “at least a couple of sticks. A blasting cap was wired through a timer, apparently set for about three minutes, that was triggered by the electrical ignition of the car. But we can’t definitively say that the TNT came from Insignia Construction or any other particular place.”
“But surely dynamite or TNT or whatever—I’m no explosives expert—is closely monitored,” said Burton. “Can’t these explosives be easily traced?”
“Well, the short answer is no,” responded Kramer. “In theory, explosives are closely monitored. There are pages and pages of regulations about how to store them, how to transport them, how to maintain a daily inventory, how to report losses. Nonetheless, hundreds of pounds of dynamite and TNT are reported lost or stolen each year. Most of it was probably misplaced or was detonated without being properly logged as having been used. But we know some of it was stolen from construction sites.
“And as for tracing, unused explosives are marked with manufacturer information and shift codes, so we can rather easily track those back to the manufacturer and from there to the purchaser. In this case, despite our best efforts, the blast and the ensuing fire in the car made the manufacturer’s markings on these sticks unrecoverable. Whoever planted the bomb may also have removed any markings from the fabric sealing on the explosive.”
“But can’t you identify the source of the explosives by a chemical analysis?” asked Burton.
“By examination of the post-blast residue, including the explosive vapor collecting on nearby surfaces, we can confirm it was TNT used in this bomb. We’re still conducting tests, trying to determine the mix of chemical materials in the TNT. By cataloging the impurities and solvents different manufacturers put into the substance in their own manufacturing processes, we can generally identify the manufacturing source of the TNT. So there’s a good chance we’ll eventually identify the manufacturer. But we’re not going to be able to do more than that.”
“I thought I’d read something about using chemical markers or microchips or something in explosives so the source could be identified afterward?” asked Burton.
“Congress, back in the 1990s mandated that ‘taggants,’ such as coded microchips, be added by manufacturers to plastic explosives, which in theory makes it possible to identify the specific batch of plastic explosives from post-blast residue. But the explosives manufacturers and the mining industry strongly opposed requiring taggants for other commercial explosives, arguing that it would be potentially unsafe, very expensive, and largely ineffective.
“They insisted that introducing any foreign materials into the formula may make the explosive unstable and also that distribution of taggant microchips into the environment may be unsafe. And given that criminals almost always build homemade bombs from black powder or from other chemicals, rather than use commercial explosives, the benefit to law enforcement arguably was limited and did not justify the added cost of integrating taggants into the manufacturing process.
“In any event, Congress didn’t include TNT in the law requiring taggants.”
“But at least you can identify the manufacturer of this TNT, by its chemical composition?” inquired Burton hopefully.
“Probably. But that really gets us next to nowhere. Each manufacturer sells to dozens of commercial buyers here in the Twin Cities, primarily in the construction industry. And most construction companies buy TNT from more than one manufacturer over the years.
“If you’re asking whether we’ll be able to say that this TNT might have come from Insignia Construction, the answer likely will be ‘yes.’ But then we’ll have to also admit that the TNT instead might have come from any company on a long list of other construction companies in the area as well.”
“So the car bomb may have been built with explosives taken from Insignia Construction,” summed up Burton. “But maybe not.”
“We do have another interesting bit of forensic evidence,” added Kramer, “although I’m not sure that, in the end, it helps very much either. We found shredded bits of duct tape among the residue at the site, some of which had traces of the protective covering for TNT attached to the sticky side of the tape. It looks like the bomb maker used duct tape to attach the bomb to the undercarriage of the car.”
“What’s the significance of that?”
“Maybe two things. First, it could point to an amateur. A professional—like a professional assassin—with experience in building car bombs would more likely use a magnet to attach the bomb to the car. On the other hand, from what we can tell so far, the way the timer was connected and the way the bomb appears to have been wired into the ignition does suggest a greater level of sophistication.”
“Would a civil engineer have the level of sophistication necessary to do this?” interrupted Burton.
“Almost surely. And I don’t want to overstate how sophisticated this fellow would have to be. While the average person on the street would not know how to pull this off—and thank God for that—it isn’t exactly rocket science either.”
“I’m sorry, I interrupted you,” apologized Burton. “You said the duct tape being used is significant for two reasons. What’s the second reason?”
“After we found the scattered and melted pieces of duct tape in the post-blast debris, one of your fellow Eden Prairie officers went back to the crime scene for us and found a roll of duct tape hanging on a nail in the garage at the Klein house. An analysis of the color, grade, and elemental composition of the duct tape used in the car bomb, when compared to that found in the garage, confirms that both were the same brand from the same manufacturer. But not more than that.”
Burton interjected, “I remember that in a kidnapping case in Minneapolis a few years back, one of the key pieces of evidence against the defendant was a comparison by prosecution experts of the duct tape that had been used to tie up and gag the victim with a roll of duct tape found in the defendant’s car. Can’t you connect the duct tape in the car bomb to the same roll found in the Klein garage?”
“You’re referring to a different forensic technique,” answered Kramer. “The pr
osecution experts in the case you describe probably were applying the method of duct tape end matching, trying to find patterns in the tears between the two separated pieces of tape. But in our case, the duct tape is too fragmented and melted even to attempt that kind of tape-end comparison.
“Again, the best we’re able to do is confirm that the duct tape used in the car bomb is the same brand of duct tape found in the Klein garage.”
“And,” laughed Burton, “we Minnesotans are awfully fond of our duct tape. I probably have four rolls of different brands from four different manufacturers, in my garage right now.”
Kramer added, “Naturally we’ve been looking for fingerprints as well on everything we have, especially the duct tape which is a very good surface for prints. Unfortunately, all we’ve found are some smudges on the few surviving and unmelted scraps of the duct tape. We didn’t find any usable prints.”
“So the car bomb may have been built with explosives taken from Insignia Construction and may have been attached to the car with duct tape from the Klein garage,” summed up Burton. “But maybe not.”
“That’s right. Maybe. Maybe not. Still, as we discussed previously, it does seem like quite a coincidence that a car driven by the wife of a guy who works with TNT is blown up by a bomb made out of TNT.”
“I don’t like coincidences,” muttered Burton.
Chapter 6
[FOUR DAYS AFTER THE TRAGEDY]
She’d heard somewhere that a person’s mood truly could color her perception of the world. Not just figuratively, but literally. Emotion, so it was said, could change how the eyes conveyed visual impressions to the brain or how the brain interpreted what the eyes perceived.
When a person flew into a rage, the rush of blood throughout the body, including the eyes, actually could make a person “see red.” Likewise, the heights of ecstasy could cause the receptors in the brain to vibrate with every slight change of tint, making colors appear more vivid.
Candace couldn’t speak from personal experience to whether these other assertions about mood affecting color perception were true. But she now could attest in all too personal a way that grief did render the world gray and dull.
Yes, the colors were still there. She had not been struck color-blind after all. But the tones looked watered down, as though someone had added a touch of gray pigmentation to every other hue.
The picture in her eyes was like that of early twilight, when the increasing darkness began to drain away the luster of the day. But the pallid shades were not accompanied by a corresponding murkiness of coming nightfall. The room remained bright, painfully bright, even as the colors became drab and pale.
• • •
Other than when she asked for a rest or someone insisted that she lie down for a while in her bedroom, Candace was never left alone that afternoon. She would have preferred to be alone in her sorrow, although she knew that being in the company of loved ones probably was good for her. And she could hardly object to a gathering of family and close friends at their house after the funeral.
Her father was there, of course. And brothers Jeffrey and Byron with their wives. Jeffrey had brought along his two small boys, ages four and six. The little ones were hustled off to another room and constantly watched over by a revolving set of guardians.
Candace had suggested, when her nephews arrived, that they could play with the toys in J.D.’s room. But everyone had silently agreed that J.D.’s room was off-limits today. Despite having made the suggestion, she was glad that no one had invaded his room.
Father Alexander Cleveland, or Father “Cleve” as everyone called him, was present as well. A portly man of fifty-three years, with a full beard that had turned mostly white, Father Cleve was looking more and more like Santa Claus with each passing year.
He had been pastor at St. Gregory’s Catholic Church in the southwestern suburbs of Minneapolis for nearly twelve years now. Candace and her family had been parishioners at St. Gregory’s since they arrived in the Twin Cities three years ago.
Father Cleve’s dark eyes spoke an eloquent homily of grief and love every time he looked her way.
• • •
The television was turned on for a while, then turned off, and then turned on yet again. When the grim silence and quiet whispers in the room grew too much to bear, the TV would come back on, droning in the background. When the jarring and quickly changing images on the screen became too unsettling, someone would switch it off.
At first, the TV was turned on to one of the cable news stations, probably “Fox News” as that was Bill’s favorite. But the news constantly rebroadcast her personal pain. Car bombings were hardly common occurrences anywhere in the United States, and the additional tragedy of the death of a child made this a compelling story nationwide. The helicopter footage of a burning car being extinguished below sickened her stomach every time she saw it. Quick shots of her family arriving at the church for the funeral and then the cemetery for the burial were hard to watch.
Even more disturbing to her than seeing her tragedy as the fodder for a news story was how quickly it was followed by a lighthearted story about the rescue of a beached whale in North Carolina or by an advertisement for the Valley Fair amusement park south of Eden Prairie. How could there be any other story worthy of attention today? How could anyone think about a day at an amusement park when her boy was gone?
Her family quickly decided they should tune the television to something else, such as one of the cartoon networks. Watching a rerun of “SpongeBob SquarePants” actually helped for a moment, as she briefly became lost in its trademark “nautical nonsense.” The fact that it bore no relationship to reality was all the better . . . for a time. But the fact that this was a show designed primarily for a youthful audience soon brought her mind back to the boy who would never see another cartoon program. And so she asked that the television be switched off yet again.
• • •
Poor little Tucker the cat wandered through the rooms without ceasing, never stopping to curl up or accept a petting from anyone who reached down to him. Candace knew it was foolish to attribute human characteristics to an animal. Still, she felt in her heart Tucker’s incessant movements meant he was looking anxiously for J.D. No, it wasn’t a foolish thought. A cat does know how to give and accept love.
No one could have doubted the possibility of genuine affection between a human being and an animal after watching Tucker and J.D. together after school each day. She remembered how Tucker would meow with delight when J.D. came home. He would rub against J.D.’s legs as he took off his back-pack. When J.D. sat down in the living room, Tucker would climb up on to J.D.’s shoulders and push his feline head against J.D.’s face.
To be sure, Tucker also may have been restless after spending three nights lodged at a pet kennel while the house was off-limits during the police investigation. The poor little guy had not been out of the house at all in the three years they’d had him, other than a short trip to a vet for an annual check-up. Candace had even arranged for a cat-watcher to visit their house each day and play with the cat whenever the family went on a trip for more than a single night. So three nights in a strange place without anyone he knew would have been stressful for Tucker.
At one point, Candace reached down and picked up the cat. Tucker tolerated it for a moment, but then started to struggle, so she let him leap back down to the floor. The cat returned to his persistent circumlocution of the house.
• • •
Tonight would be Candace’s first night back in the house. It had now been four days. For the past two nights, the police had insisted that she and Bill stay at a downtown Minneapolis hotel, with a police guard outside the room. She had simply acceded to that request, not really able to think very clearly in the first day or two. She did realize that the police were worried that whoever had targeted them with the car bomb might
try again.
She and Bill mercifully had not been asked to identify the body. They were told the matter already had been handled. She suspected her father had played some role in making that decision and sparing her from that encounter, but she knew she would never ask him.
They were asked, however, to review the death certificate, which Lieutenant Ed Burton had brought to them in the hotel room. When she saw the “Cause of Death” stated as “Homicide,” she was startled. And then she was surprised it had surprised her. She had been so adrift in her bereavement that she had given little thought to who had done this terrible thing.
Someone had attacked her family. Someone had hated them so viciously that they had placed a bomb in Bill’s car.
But before her thoughts had advanced very far down that dark and frightening trail into the woods of speculation about people of malice and hate, the face of J.D. would bring her back again. The loss of J.D. consumed every cogitation and occupied her entire mental world.
The funeral and burial had been that morning. No one ever tells you about all the mundane and morbid details that follow a premature death. Seeing the death certificate. Selecting a funeral home. Choosing cremation or burial. Finding and purchasing a cemetery plot. Arranging for inscription of a headstone. For a child.
Candace had insisted on saying something at the burial, but she didn’t trust her voice. So she decided she would be well advised to read something . . . something short. She borrowed one of her favorite passages from one of her favorite Shakespearean plays, appropriately a tragedy.
She began to recite the words from Hamlet: “Good night, sweet prince.” Then, to her dismay, she began to sob. Father Cleve, God bless him, had stepped over immediately and finished: “And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”
